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... in appealing to women, while his image as of a skillful and famous football player is be used to appeal to football fans. Besides, his image as of a fun guy makes him a unique person. His participation in Pepsi advertising campaign for listed reasons is very successful, because Davids target audience is probably everybody.
New campaigns of sex appeal aimed at women instead use self-approval, and the approval of other women, methods that are more effective. Also causing a difficulty with sex appeal for women is the females complicated requirements for a mate. For women sexual attraction must be more than just physically based. A man must also display strength, money, power, prestige, and other social factors, which define a good man David Beckham has all of it. Advertisers must incorporate the appearance of all these qualities to appeal to women. This is not to say that sex appeal always works perfectly for men.
It is not a secret that the most potent technique to sell a certain product is using the female gender as a sex symbol. The use of sex, beautiful women, and bold text is evident in the majority of magazine ads. This theory is thoroughly supported in a magazine ad for Patron brand Tequila. A highly attractive super-model is seductively puckering her lips. She has a large white top hat on with a white vest, and white pants. Her vest is unbuttoned completely and her half-naked chest appears to be bulging out.
In addition to the top half of her body, her pants are unbuttoned and unzipped completely. There is a large bottle of Patron brand Tequila at the bottom of the page. Underneath the text in white, bold lettering are the words, Taste the Magic. If the reader chooses to read the smaller text underneath the catchy sex phrase, they would discover that the beautiful woman is Karen McDougal, the 1998 Playmate of the Year. Three main techniques make up this advertisement: the use of sex, white space, and a famous super-model. The model is dressed very provocatively, as it appears that she is stripping.
This implies a sexual fantasy or desire to the reader. The reader feels that such fantasies occur if they drink Patron. All the whiteness in this advertisement supplies the feeling of clarity. The woman is pictured as being clean and reborn.
White can also be seen as the color of paradise and heaven. The identification of the models name is the most interesting part of this advertisement. The print is noticeably smaller than the advertising text, but it is big enough to read. This tequila company wants you to continue reading and discover who the model really is. Most people cannot just look at the woman and recognize her as being Karen McDougal. The ad basically has to tell the reader that the woman is Karen.
The public will then connect Patron Tequila with Playboy Super-models. Without the text, only Playboy magazine subscribers and a small percent of the male gender could identify her as being Karen. Basically, Patron attempts to get the reader to make his or her own associations. They want the public to associate Patron Tequila with sexual fantasies, and beautiful women.
In reality, no women can possibly look as beautiful as Karen McDougal. Her picture can be airbrushed, and altered using sophisticated computers. The advertisement is ultimately getting the reader to fantasize about a nonexistent paradise. The text on this article attempts to show that Patron is magical.
The reader believes that if he / she drinks the tequila, they will magically experience their sexual fantasies. The model is puckering her lips as if to give the reader a kiss, and the text is telling you to taste the magic. The magic is actually the very attractive supermodel. The reader is being told to taste the supermodels lips, in a sexual way. The ad also uses the idea of magic idea to give the impression that the product will make you a sexually beautiful person. The text makes you believe that you can experience a sexual fantasy by drinking the tequila.
Everyone knows that magic does not exist, but Patron attempts to alter the publics beliefs. Skyy Vodka advertisement depicts a man with lipstick marks hiding under a bed while his suggested entertainer hides him from another man. This advertisement shared a strong sense of sex appeal as well as a sense of daring behavior. Many of the people commented that this ad seemed to say that although Skyy Vodka could provide a good time it also looked as though they were saying it would get you into trouble. Skyy Vodka however, uses a sense of brand personality together with sexual appeal.
Haagan-Dazs ice cream follows the same trend in viewing women as sex objects. Their main advertisement depicts a man sitting on a stairway waiting for an women. This ad is black and white except the text, which is in bright yellow. The man is holding a ice cream sundae, clearly shown as being a Haagan-Dazs brand.
Written across the advertisement in yellow text is the statement, thank god shes late. In addition to this, at the bottom of the ad, is the Haagen-Dazs logo with a question asking, too much pleasure? The man is obviously waiting for his girlfriend because the two are going on a date. She is running late, and he has some time to kill. What is ironic is that the man is taking the extra time to eat some Haagen-Dazs ice cream. He does not appear to be nervous or concerned, but actually a bit relieved.
He rather prefers the woman be late so that he could have his ice cream. Once again, the female gender is negatively brought into a advertisement. The ad is implying that the ice cream is more important than the mans date with the woman. The text shows that he is having more pleasure with the ice cream, than he would with the woman. The woman is obviously representing sex. She ultimately is viewed as any object of sexual pleasure.
It does not take much analyzing to determine that the man enjoys ice cream more than sex with the woman. At first glance, the advertisement seems very dull with the black and white colors. What catches the eye immediately is the bright yellow color of the bold text. This gets the readers attention, and curiosity causes us to analyze the depicted scene. The line too much pleasure also catches the readers eye. One must ask themselves: what does too much pleasure have to do with ice cream?
Quite simply the woman in the ad represents sex, and the reader is expected to interpret this meaning on their own. This is the whole idea of association and the way that it can be used as a advertising technique. There was not even a woman directly pictured in the ad, but females were still managed to be portrayed as sex objects. This was simply down with the text. The line thank god shes late, shows that he is glad that the woman is not there. Then the reference to pleasure shows that the woman represents sex.
People usually do not get sexual pleasure from ice cream but from sex. This ad thoroughly proves the theory about women in advertisements. Many commercials portray women with a specific stereotype. It can simply be put that women are expected to be tall, thin, beautiful, and sexy.
What makes this very dangerous is the fact that we live in a society that focuses too much on appearance. The younger generation is trying to copy what they see in these magazine ads. However, it is very hard, if not impossible, to actually look like these magazine models. By reading and analyzing the stereotypes, society can educate them and come to a sense of reality. Advertising is supposed to get peoples attention but it should get their attention in a normal, creative way, and not with an offensive, imitation model, that does not represent normal people. McCabe admits that sex in ads is more about chauvinism and cocksmanship than about salesmanship.
If these people are professionals in the advertising business, they should act like professionals and think of something creative other than relying on sex as their only option. I am sure they can find a better subject matter than sex to use in advertising. The advertisers are more concerned with sales rather than figuring out what is considered respectable. If they realize that they are stereotyping and portraying women as sex symbols rather than equal members of society, they may just decrease their use of sex in advertisements. With this awareness, along with an effective organization to limit sex ads, the problem of stereotyping women will be put to an end. This is not proposing to ban sex in advertising altogether; there will be a moderate amount where it is appropriate.
Nevertheless, some might think this violates Americas freedom of speech and that the advertisers can put anything in their ads. However, there are laws and organizations that limit this freedom such as the FCC. Other people think that it is not a large enough issue to affect all of society and it should not be made into such a big case. Women are stereotyped and degraded everywhere so this will be a start to full equality between men and women.
Other proposals that try to help the problem would not succeed. Some suggest that it should be left alone but it will only get worse from this. More and more advertisers would put sex into their ads so it will increase the problem. Some propose to ban sex in advertising altogether. This would surely get rid of the problem but advertisers would be out of a business, especially advertisements that require sex in them. Therefore, the best proposal to solve the problem would be becoming aware of it and starting to limit it.
Sources: Article, (October 9, 2000). Best Spots of 2000; Adweek Vol. XXXVIII no. 41 Milton, Shirley F. (1974). Advertising for Modern Retailers; Fair Child Publications, Inc.
NY Packard, Vance. (1957). The Hidden Persuaders; Van Rees Pres. NY Taflinger, Richard F. Taking Advantage, web Goffman, Erving. (1974). Gender Advertisements. Boston: University Press.
Macdonald, Hon. David. (1979). Sex Stereotyping in the media: Images of Women. Quebec: Canadian Government Publishing Centre. Menzies, David. (1996).
Boys and Girls. Marketing 101 no 34, p. 9 - 25 Ontario Ministry of Education. (1975). Sex Role Stereotyping and Womens Studies. Ottawa: Information Canada
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Research essay sample on Sex In Advertising Black And White
